Prof. Leyens will be responsible for courses in the area of corporate law and economics.

Among other activities, he will supervise master theses and will be the promoter of PhD candidates in the EDLE programme within the field of comparative corporate and commercial law as well securities regulation. As a member of the Chair of Empirical Legal Studies he will contribute to fostering the understanding of the operation of the law within different jurisdictions and under different economic conditions. His current research concerns the role of gatekeepers of financial markets, including statutory auditors, rating agencies and financial analysts (funded by the German Research Foundation, 2013-2015).

Prof. Leyens studied law at the University of Cologne (state exam 1999), earned a master degree in international business law at Queen Mary University of London (LL.M. 2000) and completed the German Referendariat (bar exam 2006). For his doctoral thesis on corporate law and economics he received several awards, including the prestigious Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max Planck Society (dr. iur. 2006). He has been the Jun. Prof. of Private Law and Economic Analysis of the Law at the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg (2007-2013). He has served as an adviser to the German Ministry of Finance and the German Federal Parliament (2007-2009). Strong ties with ESL, especially RILE, were built up as the University of Hamburg Director of the joint doctoral programme EDLE (2009-2012) and as a lecturer of the joint master programme EMLE (2007 to date).

The professorship Erasmus Chair of Empirical Legal Studies is intended to be held alternately by distinguished scientists with an international reputation and extensive experience in the empiricism of law. The relatively new field of ‘empirical legal studies’ focuses on the quantitive study of private law (among other fields of law). It is an important chair within the research programme Behavioural Approaches to Contract and Tort.